It wasn't until Tuesday, December 20th that we began the project we thought we would be doing as soon as we got here. Up until now, we have been visiting a village called Bethel and building relationships with the community until recently. I'll share more about that time in another blog.
We start our days with breakfast at 7am and jumping in the truck at around 8am.
[Here's Teams Freedom, Transformation Station, and Beautiful Feet]
The other week we went to the hardware store and bought some supplies. We moved twenty 90 pound bags of concrete mix, aluminum sheets, steel bars, wire, nails, and such to the property we are at and it sat there.
When we were told our ministry contact and site, all I heard is we were at the roof building one. Ane then… surprise! We're building a house too! Yea, a house… for someone to live in… That's kinda a big surprise to spring on someone, but for the World Race, nothing should be a surprise.
I've never even built a bird house or mowed the lawn be fore (don't judge me)… how would I even begin to be a part of a roof building project? … House building… stuff?
Well, in many parts of the world, such as Nicaragua, 'house' and 'roof' have very different meanings than what we define them as in the States.
Here are two examples of houses we see…
Tin roofs with walls of either concrete, terra cotta, tin, or black plastic bags.
Project One – Tear Down the Walls
This is Estella's House…
The thing that the bicycle is resting against…
The one made of tin and black plastic as the wall on one of the other sides.
We're going to use terra cotta brick to build the new house and tear down the old one.
I didn't really know what to think, especially when I saw the inside. She has a wooden bed inside and that's pretty much it. No sink, toilet, furniture, tv, or much else. Granted, she probably had moved out a bunch of stuff for our construction, but really, there's not much that would fit inside. The kitchen at the last house I was at was larger than the living space she had.
Here's Estella carrying some water on her head.
I've tried it myself, and it's pretty efficient if you can get used to it.
Estella is a woman who works at the Vision Nicaragua property and has been co-cooking all the meals we have been blessed to have this month. She's super short and super sweet. I'm so glad we get to be a part of blessing her with the labor to build her house.
Here are a few things involved in building her house…
First we dug four trenches around the existing house.
They were about three feet deep and a foot and half wide.
Then we loaded these rocks into the truck…
and out… and dumped them into the bottom of the trenches.
Somwhere along the way, we had some wires bent for some frame work.
We go to the well… a lot.
We pump our water to mix the concrete to pour the foundation.
This pump was installed by Living Water International.
We like to say that the cement and dirt mix looks a lot like cookes n' cream…
If only it were…
And the concrete goes into the trenches…
And we began laying down the brick walls today.
Here's Eleazar, helping us with the construction.
He makes work more lively.
That's about as much of the house building update that I have for now…
more to come on Project One.
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Project Two : Raise the Roof!
This project is for Antonia. She co-cooks the meals with Estella and lives just a few minutes away from her in the same town of Leon. He roof is old and leaks a lot during the 6 month wet season, so our job is to tear it down and raise it up. We're adding some height to the house and raising up the level of the roof since it gets so hot here.
Here's Antonia's house with part of the roof already taken off.
You can see the roof pieces in the back,
along with everything from inside the house.
Here we are removing nails from wood so we can try and re-use some of it.
The orange shower curtain in the back is a bathroom door.
Here's some of the inside of the house with the roof taken off.
It only took a few hours of one day to take the entire roof off,
including all the wooden framework holding it up.
We're a fan of assembly lines.
It makes moving concrete blocks (or terra cotta for Project One) go a lot faster.
Our three teams are split up between the two projects.
The roof one got some brick layed on the tops of the walls to raise it up.
I like to end the day with an enchilada.
We buy them from a woman who sells them outside her house.
It's about $.50 USD, fried, crunchy, filled with rice, and highly addictive.
I love it.
And thus concludes Day 3 of Projects One & Two. Ministry has some more manual labor ahead, but I'm really enjoying the switch up. Each and every place God brings us to and through, there are lessons to learn. It's really great to demonstrate the love of Christ through these building projects. I look forward to sharing more of the progression before we leave Nicaragua. I can't believe month three is coming to an end in just over a week!
I can't believe that Christmas is only 3 DAYS away!
Feliz Navidad
from Nicaragua!
(That's Spanish for Happy Navidad from Nicaragua)
(Yea, ^ this picture is from Honduras, but who's keeping track?)
This year our tree is made out of crepe paper,
the stuff streamers are made out of!
Gotta love the World Race, make the best of every situation!
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One more thing….
My team mate Nikki is in need of financial support in order to continue on the World Race. We love her so much on our squad and know God has called her to be here on the field to be the hands and feet of Christ.
If you are willing and able to, please consider contributing to her account!
You can do so by clicking here.
The next deadline for support raising is January 1st,
I think she's about $3000 short.
I've already met mine, so if you're someone who wanted to financially support me but never got around to it…,
support my team mate, she's fantastic 🙂
Every dollar counts!
Thank you so much!
